Caffeineforge

 

 

 

The ground trembles, and beneath your adventurer’s feet the ground bursts apart to make room for a hideous and very hungry worm. Or is it an insect? Let’s see what’s crawling up here this week!

We had a busy week, and today (where I normally write the article) was especially busy, but I’ll do my best 🙂

 

Dirk decided to paint his mini like the 3.5 monster manual depicts it (perhaps a bit more colorful), but he also wanted something special for this mini.

First he thought about a small diorama, with another mini, a gladiator, fighting the beast, but then, as I said, bsy week, so he went for a ray of acid instead – which looks awesome too in my opinion.

He made it by sculpting the basic form on a toothpick (he used milliput clay, but you could as easily use green stuff or other epoxy), painted it green and added several layers of water effect paste (Vallejo). It’s removable; for this Dirk drilled a small hole in the creature’s mouth where the end of the pic is inserted.

Great special effect, really! I also like the scales on the back and the broken clay texture on the base.

 

My approach was more on the colorful side: I thought about bugs and how colorful they can be, because I wanted to use the monster in a tropical D&D setting:

As you see, the Ankheg is an orgy in red and orange – again I did the blending wet-in-wet, becaue a) it gives a nice smooth effect in short time and b) it forces me to hurry! Otherwise I’d never get it done in time :p

The black markings give a nice contrast, and the eye-spots on the creature’s head were a funny last-minute addition – many animals have these, mostly to distract or frighten predators, so we can wonder which kind of creature preys on Ankhegs…? But we all know: There’s alsways a bigger fish 😀

(I used a light grey background this time, and I got the impression the lighting worked a bit better; unfortunately the semi-gloss finish, which look quite nice in real life, was a bit too shiny for the camera. Well…)

 

William’s Ankheg is also more on the colorful side, and I love how the tones work with each other.

He started with the classical green and brown body, but then faded into blue and purple. The composition is not too bright, but still colorful, and from the distance you could imgaine the greenish-black shimmer of a big beetle’s shell. Also good work on the eyes, the spot makes them look as if they were glowing!

 

Arjen wrote he liked the Ankheg so much, he ordered two of the mini in the Kickstarter and was so eager to paint it, he did two versions!

The first one was painted by the book (monster manual) and has a wonderful olive tone plus a nice slimy shine on the back scales. Arjen said he went back and forth between the two versions and didn’t have the time to do all highlights, forunately the mini looks fine as it is already 🙂

For the second one, which he calls “Venom Ankheg”, he used darker brown and, of course, green for the back scales. But the real show off is the front, where Arjen painted the mandibles in a sickly bright green, giving it a dangerous and very poisonous lighting effect! Well done 🙂

 

Here is this week’s gallery:

 

Coming next:

05/02/16 “Sharkman” (Bones II Core Set)

Want to participate in next week’s post? Email the pictures of your minis until 01/05/16 to

–>  new address:  MondayMiniature@fantasymail.de  (It’s a .de domain, in case emails are bouncing)

05/09/16 “Mister Bones” (Bones II Core Set)

05/16/16 Big Monster Part I: “Chimera” Preparations & Basic Colors (Bones II Core Set)

05/23/16 Big Monster Part II: “Chimera” The Final Result (Bones II Core Set)

05/30/16 “Bloodmane, Gnoll Warrior” (Bones II Core Set)

06/06/16 Dragon Hatchlings Part II: “Blue“ and “Green“ (Bones II Core Set)

06/13/16 Cassiatta, female Dark Knight (Bones II Core Set)

(Wishes? Ideas? Tell us via email or in the comments!)

This entry was posted by Antonia & Dirk Vogel.